Just as he is about to leave office, IDF Chief of Staff Ashkenazi finds himself under unprecedented hostile media coverage

Today we are finally bidding goodbye to Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who, as the Israeli saying goes, will now be able “to look after his house” (when we’d be rid of Gen. Galant, he’d be able to look after his manor), and just now some unwholesome truths about Ashkenazi emerge.

Two journalists – one of them, Dan Margalit, famous for being a fawning friend of men in power; the other, Dr. Ronen Bergman, for plumbing the depths of our secret services, sometime getting in trouble for it – are publishing a new book, precisely as Ashkenazi is leaving office. They purport to explore much of what went wrong with his service, and raise several claims against him (Hebrew).

The main point of the new book deals with the so-called “Galant document,” which masqueraded as a document written by Galant’s PR people, and looked as if it exposed a conspiracy against Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi, it is commonly known, received a copy and kept it, showed it to some other officers (including the new Chief of Staff, Benni Ganz), and his chief of staff had it leaked to the press. The document was fabricated, per his confession, by one Lt. Col. Boaz Harpaz, a bona fide crook. Ashkenazi kept claiming he doesn’t know Harpaz; this despite the fact Harpaz and Ashkenazi’s wife, Rona, have exchanged some 150 SMS messages.

Now Margalit and Bergman claim Ashkenazi was hiding his close contact with Harpaz, which went back for years; that Ashkenazi “did not tell the truth” to a committee evaluating Harpaz’s security clearance in 2005; that Harpaz was in fact a mole for Ashkenazi in the bureau of Defense Minister Barak; and they hint at much greater involvement of Ashkenazi in the fabrication of the Galant document – they claim that Ashkenazi asked that Harpaz will put down in writing what he learned about the so-called conspiracy against him, and that Ashkenazi probably held several version of the document, giving to the police just one of them.

The response of the IDF Spokesman, Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu – who actually acts as if he was Ashkenazi’s personal spokesman, and who orchestrated Ashkenazi way too long “farewell voyage” in the IDF – is worth quoting. “The Chief of Staff and the IDF do not see fit to cooperate with this libelous and biased publication, which is intended to harm the Chief of Staff as he is to retire from the IDF and libel him. It is clear that the ‘book’ [sic] is propelled by a back current of interested parties, and that it was hastily written by reporters who have already expressed their clear and biased opinion.”

This calls for several notes: First, kudos to Haaretz for referring to the Spokesman’s words as a “claim;” let’s hope they stick to this policy, and stop accepting his words as revealed gospel. Second, since Benayahu claims the book is “libelous,” one should hope to see a libel suit in the courts soon. If there isn’t – and I wouldn’t hold my breath – one should assume Margalit and Bergman tell the truth. Thirdly, Benayahu’s windy reply omits two important things: a clear threat to sue – and a clear denial.

Israeli journalist Yoav Yitzhak raised another point during the weekend. The Government’s Counsel, Yehuda Winstein, ordered a new and secret investigation into the Galant document case; prosecution sources say it does not relate to the document itself. According to Yitzhak (Hebrew), the investigation deals with the business contacts between “the Ashkenazi family” and Harpaz, which according to Yitzhak have promoted shady security deals. Ashkenazi, it should be noted, has left the IDF in 2005, went into business, came back to the Defense Ministry as its CEO, and only afterwards was appointed Chief of Staff.

As The Marker’s Uri Blau exposed (Hebrew) in 2009, Ashkenazi bears a resemblance to Ehud Barak and Avigdor Liberman in at least one point: having a suspiciously successful child. His son, Itay, all of 30 years, is already a name to be reckoned with and connects his father with other arms dealers. Ashkenazi did not report his son’s flowering business contacts, even though Ashkenazi junior worked for companies who supply the IDF. Ashkenazi also has a “consulting” firm under his control, about its activities he prefers to keep silent.

Israeli Chiefs of Staff generally enjoy a Teflon defensive coating while in office, which they lose immediately upon retirement, when their halo is taken away and they are seen as the – generally, catastrophically bad – politicians they are. In Askenazi’s case, it seems, the coating was cracked a few hours ahead of schedule. And this is not the end. One should keep in mind there was no CoC in IDF history so coddled by the media, which described him – for no discernable reason, aside from his well-oiled PR machine – as the ”restorer of the IDF.” Ashkenazi did his best to avoid interviews while in office. Apparently, he knew what he was doing.